Review Time!

Ok, so what are you doing for this break? Letting them watch more TV than normal? Letting them stay up late? Still teaching Reading, Writing, and Math? All of the above?

Because we had our last CC and went right into Thanksgiving I did a little of everything. And now, I'm back in the saddle. But last night I had a thought, what am I going to review? When am I going to review and how? They have learned it all and I can't imagine they will want to sit and do it all over again the same way. Then I thought, how many days am I going to review CC? This long break makes for a really long time to be off schedule and all though the ADD adult in me wants to throw a party, the realistic self says you will go nuts without a schedule. So here's what I'm doing, and tell me if this is similar to you.

I'm only doing "school" 3 days a week. As that was our normal schedule (not including CC). And I'm only doing the simple core (Reading, Writing, and Math) with the kids. So I counted out travel days and typical days we will need to spend doing purely non school and came up with only 12 days I want to use for school in the next 6 weeks. So that made it easy, 12 days, 12 weeks to review. One day each week, simple.

Then I went on to think about how to incorporate and motivate my kids into reviewing with me while we are in the holiday season. And a way for me to not burn out during this break... ahhh, in comes the Christmas cookies. Since we've been hosting, I haven't had much time on the computer and I haven't had time to check out all the fun blogs for review games. So I had to think of something fast! Day One was today and momma was still in vacation mode.

Normally (during the last 12 weeks), I would sit them down and we would sing our songs, go over our review work, yada, yada, yada. But today I thought, I don't want to do that- I want to have a bit more fun with this and since they've already learned about the Fertile Crescent let's just review it while we bake cookies. So I asked and if they got it right, they poured an ingredient. If they got it wrong, we reviewed with the music on my phone. And moved right along. 

I checked the items they got and circled the ones they needed help with. 

Here's my handy dandy flip chart from And Here We Go. Imagine it turned the right way... :)

And at some point each day plan to have the timeline playing, the prepositions playing, and so on. But nothing is sit down and sing it. 

It went over very well and I was so happy because I was just as excited as they were to review being that there was a sweet reward at the end. Let's remember to not burn out. Take the break and do something fun. If it's not baking, make it whatever you and your kids enjoy. Puzzles, coloring, board games, whatever! 

Tomorrow we are icing our cookies and hopefully this week we are going to start on our gingerbread houses. All with a review in mind... :)

Consequently, after doing this- I found a great post on review games through our blog carnival from Half a Hundred. It's here in case you missed either. Totally doable and really worth the 15 minutes of a read. I will definitely be doing the popsicle game next. Easy and little prep.

Blessings to you all!

-Crecia